I Take off the MASK!

People always seem to need evidence. Like Doubting Thomas, they won’t BELIEVE anything unless they see it with their own two eyes. And worse, even if they see something, they still find so many excuses not to believe. They seek more and more evidence until they can finally support their stand of NOT BELIEVING.

For example, a person may see a yellow object, long and curved, a bit pointed at the end, fleshy and looks like fruit. In fact, it looks like a BANANA! Then a monkey appears and sees the object, smells it, peels it and eats half of it. The person cries, “Boy, it sure looks like a banana.” Then I tell that person that it was indeed a banana.

The person frowns and tells you, well you know, a monkey is still a monkey, suppose that the monkey was fooled? WHAT?! This person sees a banana, sees a monkey eat that banana and still doesn’t believe. So you both steal that banana from the poor monkey and have it inspected by a scientist, not just an ordinary scientist, but a BANANA EXPERT. The expert confirms that it was indeed a banana. But Doubting Thomas still wasn’t satisfied. What if the expert was just mistaken? Was he really an expert of BANANACOLOGY? So you both investigate his credentials and certificates from schools he graduated from. They were authentic. But wait a minute! What if that school was releasing these certificates without quality education? And then, what if the theories from previous scientists taught have all been errors? Could it still be banana?

The argument can go on and on, doubting this and doubting that. Woe to the person who allows himself to be victimized by DOUBTING BANANAS! When is his doubt going to be satisfied? In my own area of expertise, I’ve met auditors who act just like that, never being satisfied even if a concrete evidence is presented infront of their faces. There are also bosses like that. They in turn doubt their auditors.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ask for evidences and that we shouldn’t verify things. What I’m saying is that we should know when to stop our investigations before we all act like fools. But how? COMMONSENSE. Something that’s very uncommon nowadays.

In a time where we rely upon so many manuals and experts, we’ve started to lose our own minds and our own powers to understand. We’ve lost our commonsense and became doubting bananas, paranoid people who can’t ever be satisfied.

Don’t be a banana. Nurture your mind. In the end, maybe it won’t matter anyway what fruit the monkey ate. So what if it’s not a banana after all?

Have you ever imagined how it would be like NOT to feel hungry ever again? Would you like that? And I don’t refer to that situation where you have lots of food so you won’t starve, no, not like that. I refer to that situation when your body won’t need anymore food at all, when you’ll never feel the pangs of hunger again, never! Would you like that?

For my own preference, I’d rather not. At first glance, what’s being offered is like magic, a pill that would eradicate that “evil” of hunger, that “dependence” on regular food supply in order to survive. It would be cost-beneficial, too, since a big percentage of the money we earn goes only to our food supply.

But then I thought of all the mouth-watering foods I’ve ever tasted. I’ve thought of fried chicken and ice cream and newly baked cookies and brewed coffee and I gave in. How could I ever manage missing all that? Rather, how could I deprive myself of all such blessings?

Some might argue that I might still be given the power to taste food and even to eat eventhough I won’t be needing it anymore. Some way of saying I could have my cake and eat it too!

Yet would it be the same? That same kind of satisfaction when you’re as hungry as a bear and then a feast is suddenly presented before you? No, not at all!

Without the hunger, without that desire, there cannot be satisfaction as well, no pleasure that can ever be complete.

I guess that makes up most of our lives here as mortals. Having a desire, working towards it, and then feeling the joy of its fulfillment.

Sometimes, with all our difficulties, we feel that maybe, it would have been better had we no need for anything at all. We wished to be exempt from hunger, from threat, from pain, from longings, from having dreams.

But aren’t these the things that make us humans after all? Aren’t these the things that tell us we’re still alive, and that we can dream and make those dreams manifest before our very eyes?

In the end, it isn’t the absence of hunger that we’d want, but its satisfaction It isn’t the absence of life and all its hardships that we pray for, but a fullness that would continuously enrich our souls.